Hi, I'm Jim Knopf. Thanks for stopping in. Pull up a stool and set
a spell.

It's true. I started the Shareware revolution in 1982. Be the first
on your block to know the real story about the start of Shareware.

Shareware was born simultaneously in two places. In Tiburon,
California, it was born as the program PC-Talk, fathered by Andrew
Fluegelman. In Bellevue, Washington, it sprang to life as PC-File,
the brain child of Jim Knopf. This is my half of the story. I'm Jim
Knopf, the father of Shareware. This is the story I used to call
"How did I get into this mess?"

I needed a program to print mailing labels for a local church
congregation. I had an Apple computer, so I wrote the program in
Applesoft BASIC. I wanted more than just a label printing program,
so I wrote a general purpose database program. I liked what I
produced so much the program itself became a hobby - something I
continued to work on and improve in my spare time.

Soon thereafter, the IBM Personal Computer was announced. I
perceived instantly the machine would revolutionize the personal
computer industry - so I sold my Apple computer the same day and
placed my order for an IBM PC.

The first program I converted from Applesoft BASIC to IBM BASIC was
my database program. The conversion was easy. It took only a few
days to get the tiny database program running happily on the IBM
PC.

I was working for IBM at the time. Many of my fellow IBM'ers were
receiving their first personal computers. As an old hand at
personal computing, I was anxious to get my comrades off to a good
start. So I shared my database program with many of them.

Out of a simple desire to freely share a good thing with others,
PC-File was born. It didn't have its final name yet (I called it
"Easy File.") It soon became a hit at the Seattle offices of IBM
and throughout the Seattle area as enthusiastic users of the free
program shared copies of it with friends and associates.

I used the database program to keep track of its own public - its
growing number of devotees. But problems soon developed. It became
increasingly expensive and time consuming to notify users when
fixes or improvements became available. How could I identify which
of the users were serious ones - those that desired and required
enhancements? How could I afford to send mailings to notify them of
the availability of improvements?

I decided to place a message in the program. I would ask those who
received it to voluntarily send a modest donation to help defray my
costs. The message encouraged users to continue to use and share
the program with others, and to send a $10 donation only if they
wanted to be included in my mailing list.

The first person to receive the program with its unusual request
telephoned me almost immediately. He had also received a copy of
PC-Talk, a program with a similar message. He was excited by the
similarity in the two requests for donations, and felt I should get
in touch with PC-Talk's author, Andrew Fluegelman. I examined the
PC-Talk disk. Upon reading Andrew's request for other programmers
to join with him in this unique "marketing experiment," I decided
to mail Andrew my program.

Andrew was impressed. He telephoned me immediately and we decided
to jointly reference each other on our distribution disks. I would
name my program PC-File, to complement the PC-Talk name Andrew was
using. I would request a voluntary payment of $25, to exactly match
the amount he was suggesting.

I could not have predicted what would happen next. My wife said I
was "a foolish old man" if I thought even one person would
voluntarily send me money for the program. I was more optimistic. I
suspected that enough voluntary payments would come to help pay for
expansions to my personal computer hobby - perhaps several hundred
dollars. Maybe even a thousand dollars (in my wildest dreams!) But
my tiny post office box was too small to receive the responses from
a wildly enthusiastic public.

Everything was right. PC's were selling like hotcakes, and there
were few database programs available. Other programs were burdened
with clumsy copy protection schemes. Here was a program that
encouraged users to copy it.

Other programs were high priced. Here was one that modestly
suggested a small payment.

Other programs had to be purchased before being tried out. Here
was one that could be tried out extensively before the purchase.

Other programs were sold from retail stores. Here was a radical
new marketing idea, and the computer magazines were hungry for
such things to write about. The result: much free publicity for
PC-File.

Another phenomenon assured the success of Shareware. The biggest
computer clubs the world has ever known sprang up all over the
country. Club librarians were hungry for programs to share with
their members. The Shareware approach was perfectly suited to these
clubs. More free publicity - and a perfect vehicle for giving wide
distribution to the shareware disks.

A man named Doug Clapp wrote a stunning review of PC-File for
PC-World magazine. My family and I were vacationing in Hawaii when
the magazine hit the news stands. The response was overwhelming.
Our house sitter had to cart the mail home daily in grocery sacks.

When we arrived home, the grocery sacks were strewn all over the
basement floor. We had to step over and around them just to get
into our basement office. My son, John, worked days, evenings, and
weekends for most of the summer just catching up on the mail. Life
would never be the same for any of us!

I had always said I would never consider leaving my secure job with
IBM until I was receiving at least twice as much money from another
source. I was wrong. By the summer of 1984 I was making ten times
as much with my little software business. Still, I would not have
left IBM voluntarily.

I didn't leave IBM voluntarily. My body forced me out. I could no
longer work 8 hours each day with IBM, and then come home to
another 4 hours of work each evening. Saturday and much of Sunday
were also consumed by my second job. I had come to a fork in the
road. I had lassoed a dinosaur. He was shaking me around fiercely,
and I couldn't let go of the rope.

"Jim, if you can do this well in the software business by treating
it as a part time hobby, how well would you do if you took it
seriously?" This thought gave me the courage to do what my body had
been demanding of me for months. I resigned from IBM.

It's 1987 now

Someday someone will write the rest of this story. My software
company has over 10 programs in its product line now. There are 18
employees. Shareware has established itself as a respectable
marketing method. PC-File, my little part-time hobby database, has
a devoted following of nearly a million users.

Supplemental note: at its peak a few years later, the company
had over 35 employees and grossed over $4.5 million annually.

1995 Extra credit reading

So you thought Jim Button was the Father of Shareware! He is. That
was me. I published under the pseudonym "Jim Button" because it's a
more marketable name. Besides, my own name (Knopf) means "Button"
in German. The title "The Father of Shareware" is not
self-ascribed. It was given to me in 1985 by Peter Norton, a good
friend.

The term "shareware" as applied to this form of software
distribution is somewhat new. Andrew and I began by calling it
"freeware." All of these words have taken on different meanings
now, and "shareware" has come to be the most commonly used word.

In 1992 I had a heart attack - at the tender age of 49! I realized
then the software business was too stressful for us eastern
Washington beet kickers farm boys and decided to eliminate the
pressures. I sold all my business assets last year and have retired
to enjoy my family and the peace and solitude of the Pacific
Northwest. You'll find me now with a grandchild on my shoulders...
or a fly rod in my hand!